G Living’s Brendan Brazier is one the world’s few professional athletes whose diet is 100 percent plant based. He’s a professional Ironman triathlete, bestselling author on performance nutrition, and the creator of an award-winning line of whole food nutritional products called Vega.

The following is our second excerpt from Brendan’s new book “The Thrive Diet”, on sale now in Canada and and in the U.S. in January.

Whole Foods For Complete Nourishment The healthiest way to meet nutritional needs is to simply eat a diet rich in whole foods. Food-sourced vitamins and minerals are superior to their laboratory-created counterparts. As I noted earlier, many calcium supplements are derived from nonfood sources — oyster shells, bovine bone meal, or dolomite — none of which the body is able to use efficiently. Again, the more work the body must do to assimilate nutrients, the less usable energy it will be left with. Salt is another illustration of this. Salt derived from the earth or the sea is often added to food during processing; salt is rarely consumed in its alternative form — plants. Yet, that is a much better way to get sodium in your diet: Let the plant draw and assimilate it and other minerals from the soil or sea, doing most of the work for you. My favorite source of sodium is raw dulse. A sea vegetable, dulse is exceptionally healthy, offering a plethora of minerals that help prolong hydration and therefore endurance.

Unexpectedly hearing a loud noise when the room is quiet, you might feel a sudden rush of energy. This is the most basic form of stimulation, left over from your primal survival mechanism. Your body assumes the loud noise is a threat and prepares you for action by engaging the adrenal glands to draw more energy.

In reaction to the first onset of stimulation — a form of stress — we gain energy. We become more alert, our strength can increase and we have the ability to process information more quickly and react faster. Summoning its hormonal resources to momentarily improve strength and reaction time, the body would have likely improved its odds of getting out of a prehistoric bind. Early man would certainly have benefited from greater strength and quicker reaction time if confronted by a predatory animal.

Of course, we aren’t confronted with those types of threats today. But we face a host of modern-day ones that evoke the same hormonal response. Stress of any kind — be it too much work, family-related concerns, poor diet, breathing impure air, constantly having to be “on”, and not enough down time — put strain on the adrenal glands.

G Living’s Brendan Brazier is one the world’s few professional athletes whose diet is 100 percent plant based. He’s a professional Ironman triathlete, bestselling author on performance nutrition, and the creator of an award-winning line of whole food nutritional products called Vega.

The following is our fifth excerpt from Brendan’s book “The Thrive Diet”, on sale now.

The balance of acid and alkaline within the body is referred to as pH (meaning “potential of hydrogen”), and measured on a scale ranging from pH 1 (the most acidic) to pH 14 (the most alkaline). A neutral or good pH balance is 7.35; maintaining this balance is vital. If the body’s pH drops, meaning our body has become too acidic, the likelihood of ailments rises sharply. An acidic environment within the body negatively affects health at the cellular level. It is not possible to be truly healthy when the body is in a constant state of acidosis (characterized by excessively high acid levels).

G Living’s Brendan Brazier is one the world’s few professional athletes whose diet is 100 percent plant based. He’s a professional Ironman triathlete, bestselling author on performance nutrition, and the creator of an award-winning line of whole food nutritional products called Vega.

The following is an excerpt from Brendan’s new book “The Thrive Diet”, on sale now in Canada and and in the U.S. in January.

Raw and low-temperature cooked foods | Enzyme Enhancement
High-temperature cooking and processing of food destroys the enzymes and nutrients that allow the food to be efficiently digested. Therefore, before the body can make use of cooked food, it must produce enzymes to aid in the digestion process. That takes work.

One of the least appreciated yet most important components of our diet, enzymes are vital to achieving optimal health. An absence of enzymes in your diet can result in the same sickness and disease associated with malnutrition, even if your diet is otherwise healthy. Without enzymes, food cannot be turned into usable fuel for the body. As with hormones, enzyme production in the body diminishes with age, leaving us reliant on diet to provide them. In the distant past, that was of little concern, as enzymes were plentiful in food. But today enzymes are not so abundant in our foods. As our fresh whole-food choices dwindle, making way for highly refined, processed options, enzymes in our foods diminish.

Omega-3 has moved to the upper level of awareness, even for the average consumer. In fact, it’s become “mainstream”. Recently I saw a generic brand of knock-off Oreos. Not surprisingly, their first ingredient was refined sugar and the second was bleached white flour. However, across the front of the box in a font larger than the name of the cookies it said “Omega-3!” If there were any doubt that Omega-3 was hot, this should lay it to rest. And while Omega-3 is vastly important — essential even — its usage and the way in which it’s being promoted has become somewhat misguided. As with many healthy foods or nutrients — once grabbed by the mainstream, they tend to be slightly misunderstood.

An upswing in awareness of Omega-3 consumption began to develop soon after a World Health Organization (WHO) report was released that suggested the average North American eats a vastly out-of-balance ration of Omega-6 to Omega-3. And that this was linked to serious health problems. Consumers of the Standard American Diet (SAD) commonly ingest a ratio that is in the realm of 20:1, the report states. That means that 20 times more Omega-6 is being consumed than Omega-3.

G Living’s Brendan Brazier is one the world’s few professional athletes whose diet is 100 percent plant based. He’s a professional Ironman triathlete, bestselling author on performance nutrition, and the creator of an award-winning line of whole food nutritional products called Vega.

The following is our fourth excerpt from Brendan’s book “The Thrive Diet”, on sale now.

I use the term biological debt to refer to a state that the body goes into after energy from stimulation has dissipated. Often brought about by eating refined sugar or drinking coffee to gain energy in the short term, biological debt is a state of fatigue.

For long-term health and vitality, we need to understand the difference between two types of energy: one obtained from stimulation, the other from nourishment. As a general rule, the more processed the food is, the more stimulating its effect will be on the nervous system, and the less nourishing. In contrast, the more natural and whole a food is — raw and sprouted being the best — the less stimulating and the more nourishing it will be. Because of our insatiable desire for quick, convenient energy “on the go,” our streets are crammed with coffee, donut, and fast food establishments. This solves the convenience problem and offers a short-term energy solution through stimulation. However, it does nothing to help with the payment inevitably required by the body if this route is taken regularly. The body can subsist on stimulating, nutrient-absent food only so long before becoming either exhausted or sick –and where the body goes, the mind is sure to follow.

There are several reasons people struggle with change. In fact, those who make positive changes are more likely to discontinue them than those who make negative ones because those who see themselves as making a sacrifice in exchange for a certain improvement want their investment to pay off quickly. If results aren’t instantaneous, interest quickly dwindles. In addition, negative initial results are almost certain to be a deterrent.

For example, many athletes I know have, at some point, tried a vegan diet, although usually not for more than two weeks at a time. Here’s the problem they encounter: when a new way of eating is adopted, the body must adapt. And with adaptation comes stress. Most commonly referred to as detoxification in this case, this is the body’s way of eliminating toxins accumulated over years of consuming sub-optimal food.

Our bodies are equipped with coping mechanisms that allow us to function optimally relative to the nourishment supplied. Seemingly counterintuitive, the first few days of an optimal diet will not be a pleasant experience. Often, years of less-than-ideal eating practices have rendered the body nutritionally stressed. The poorer the quality of the previous diet, the longer the detoxification process will last. Those converting from a Standard American Diet (SAD), for example, to an exclusively whole food plant-based diet will likely take in excess of four weeks to ‘cleanse’ the body of toxins. Usually detox symptoms include headache, blotting, fatigue, and sleep disturbances.

As you can imagine, an athlete who has made the transition to a vegan diet for the sake of improved performance is not going to be tolerant of these symptoms. Also, to make matters worse, most athletes are hyper sensitive to change. In effect, the detox symptoms are magnified in an athlete’s body due to the high level of “body consciousness” that most athletes have innately developed.

In the shadow of the “Standard American Diet”, the “modern vegetarian diet” has emerged. Although considerably healthier than the SAD, the “modern vegetarian diet” isn’t without its shortcomings. Mostly built on complex carbohydrates such as breads and pasta and fortified with processed soy products and laboratory created multi vitamins and minerals, the “modern vegetarian diet” lacks several health-promoting elements.

Interestingly, the “modern vegetarian diet” lacks vegetables, what ideally it should be built on.

When I first made the transition to a plant-based diet at the age of 15, I ran into several problems. As I learned more, and began to understand the subtleties of a plant-based diet, what mine lacked revealed itself.

Complete protein: Vital for muscle regeneration and hormone production, a lack of dietary protein quickly leads to a lack of optimal health. This is was one of my problems when I first adopted the diet in 1990. However, these days the chance of vegetarians lacking protein is slim. Due to a flood of soy and gluten-based products such as imitation hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks and even bacon, options are plentiful. Unfortunately, the availability of these products have lead to another concern. Soy and gluten sensitivities are becoming prevalent, simply because so many of our foods contain more soy and gluten than the body can handle. Resulting in mild flu-like symptoms, fatigue, reduced sleep quality and sometimes even irritability, an over abundance of soy and gluten in the diet should be avoided. I opt for as many raw sources of protein as I can. Hemp is an excellent choice. I also like sprouted legumes, seeds and pseudo grains such as amaranth, quinoa buckwheat and wild rice.

At this point, most of us know what foods are healthy. The challenge is no longer in finding the best health-promoting foods, but rather conveniently incorporating them into the diet on a daily basis without overextending our time budget. What then is the best route to take when aiming to integrate more healthy foods into the diet by replacing the less-healthy options?

A common approach when transitioning to a new way of eating is to eliminate certain non-health promoting foods. However, the most effective way to seamlessly adopt a new eating plan is to include more health-promoting foods as opposed to eliminating the less healthy. This is a practical solution that works on a physiological level as well as a psychological one.

Physically, this approach is ideal in that it allows time for the body to detoxify itself. Healthier foods generally have more fiber, more chlorophyll and are often enzyme rich. These three components of healthy food will, however, take the body a bit of time to adapt to. By slowly adding foods that are rich in these nutrients, the body will grow used to them and actually begin to expect and even desire them over time.

Staying properly hydrated and fueled during exercise improves endurance, we know that. But what is the best way best way to ensure that you maintain hydration and blood sugar levels?

Drinking and eating of course. Simple.

The trouble is, sometimes while exercising intensely – especially in a race situation – we can actually forget about the need for fluid and calories until faced with the result of their absence. At this point, of course, it’s too late to hydrate and fuel without a decline in performance. We must drink before we are thirsty and take in calories before we are hungry or feel the first onset of fatigue.

To time this correctly, practise in training. I recommend eating what you would normally eat before a race, then go on a training run / ride. Allow yourself to get slightly thirsty, then look at your watch and subtract 15 minutes from the length of time you’ve been out. That’s when you should have stated drinking.

How important are fats, what forms should you be consuming and in what quantities? It wasn’t long ago when then medical community was advocating the avoidance of all fat, even in the form of nuts or an avocado. Long gone are the days of neglect and dismissal when it comes to fat. We have made great progress drawing more clear lines between raw plant based sources that are good for you, even anti-aging, and those that are harmful such as cooked, animal based, and processed saturated and trans fats.

Bad fat

A deficiency of healthy fat runs prevalent throughout the modern day North American diet with the majority of people consuming too many of the detrimental bad fats including saturated fats in meat and dairy, and processed polyunsaturated fats or hydrogenated trans-fat from cooking oil and margarine used in processed foods. Consuming too many of these and not enough of the good fats contribute to stroke, heart attack, chronic inflammation, cognitive impairment, allergy, auto immune diseases and ultimately premature death.

Many of the oils we think are doing our bodies good are in fact causing further damage. The processing of oil can be the difference between good and bad. Some extraction methods for cheaper oils involve high heat, which can actually cause the oil to convert to trans fat. Other extraction methods use chemical solvents to separate the oil, usually done with low-grade oils.

G Living’s Brendan Brazier is one the world’s few professional athletes whose diet is 100 percent plant based. He’s a professional Ironman triathlete, bestselling author on performance nutrition, and the creator of an award-winning line of whole food nutritional products called Vega.

The following is our second excerpt from Brendan’s new book “The Thrive Diet”, on sale now in Canada and and in the U.S. in January.

Ever have difficulty waking up in the morning or find that you have low energy all day long? Are you unable to concentrate at work? Do you feel sluggish and depressed? If so, you could be a good candidate for a cleanse. Cleansing your body of accumulated toxins can help you gain energy and improve overall health. Many people report more clarity, greater alertness, overwhelming joy and even incredible insight after a cleanse.

A simple test you can do to determine whether or not you’re in need is to eat a few leaves of a dark leafy green vegetable, such as kale, or down a couple of shots of fresh wheat grass juice. If you can get it down without cringing — chances are, your system is already alkaline. However, if these foods taste horribly bitter and nearly cause a gag reflex, you will certainly benefit from a cleanse.